The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 16, 2398

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The checkpoint has evidently been abandoned by the time they get to it the next morning. From the looks of it, there’s a pretty decent operation here that’s designed to prevent unwanted crossings. There is no reason to not station someone here at all times, even if this weren’t the most popular place to transit, which it is, because it’s the closest to the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar. Mateo thinks he sees someone move over yonder, but it’s just some plastic sheeting flapping in the wind. This feels like the start of a monster movie. “Timofey, what do you make of this?”

“We should turn back,” he advises. “Something has happened here.”

“What, were they attacked, or something?” Alyssa asks. She already looks like the dvoryanin, Vissarion Chaykovsky.

“We would see signs of struggle,” Timofey explains. “The men were ordered to leave. They knew we were coming.”

“No, I meant that maybe someone else was attacked elsewhere, and the border guards went off to help.”

“It’s possible guards from one side were called off, but what of guards on other side? We should turn back,” Timofey repeats.

“You can,” Mateo says. “This is too important to stop now.”

“I tell you, it’s trap,” Timofey insists.

“Getting out of traps is sort of our thing,” Marie says. “Why do you think Winona keeps trying to recruit my people?”

“Very well,” Timofey submits. “We proceed...with caution.”

Mateo gently depresses the pedal, going only a kilometer an hour at first. He gradually accelerates every several seconds, until he’s finally back up to normal speed five minutes later. They don’t run into any trouble all the way up the highway. Timofey keeps his eyes on the windows for suspicious activity while Marie keeps her ear on the signals. No one seems to be tracking or chasing them. It goes smoothly...too smoothly.

It isn’t until they get to the site that they encounter a problem, and it’s a big one. Marie peers through the windshield. “Alyssa, Plan B.”

Alyssa transforms herself into the image of an agent that she passed in the hallway of Winona’s SD6 field office. He’s big and imposing, so while Alyssa hopes not to have to fight, she will be able if it comes down to it. Mateo sees what Marie does at the same time. Vissarion Chaykovsky is already here. He’s standing on the edge of the empty lot, clearly waiting for them. A construction crew is behind them, beginning to dig exactly where they expect the diamonds and timonite to be. One thing’s for sure, there’s a leak in the organization. He looks back at Timofey.

“I know how this looks,” Timofey says in an immediately defensive tone. “I swear upon my God’s heart that I had nothing to do with this.”

Mateo looks over to Marie sitting shotgun for guidance. She reaches under her seat and takes out an actual shotgun. It’s really short, which he believes would be called a sawed-off? Yeah, that sounds right. “Follow my lead.” She opens the door, and steps towards the men with action hero confidence.

“There is no need for violence,” Vissarion says with calm supervillain confidence.

She points her weapon at his head as she draws nearer. “We’re taking over this operation. Tell your men to shut off their machines, and surrender.”

“In our country,” Timofey whispers, “on local level, you want something, you take it. Strongest wins.”

Vissarion smiles. “You are not Russian. You have no rights here.”

“What are you digging here for?” Marie asks, unrelenting with the shotgun.

Vissarion waits to answer, milking this moment for all it’s worth. “Diamonds.” Yeah, definitely a leak.

Mateo checks Timofey’s expression again, but there’s still no way to tell if he’s truly defected, or if he’s been playing them the whole time. When it comes to double agents, you never really know.

Vissarion goes on, “we are prepared to make a deal. The diamonds, and all their worth, are ours, but we promise never to use any weapons we engineer from the funds against the United States. Also, we would like fusion, and this would be how we pay.”

“I’m not at liberty to make any deal such as this,” Marie admits. “And I don’t know what fusion is.”

“Don’t play coy, Mrs. Walton,” Vissarion grins. “It’s unbecoming of a lady.”

Marie thrusts her weapon forward, fast but only a little, to send the menacing message that she’s ready to use it.

“The deal is to get you to lower your gun,” Vissarion goes on. “We don’t need permission to mine these lands. They are well within Russian borders. You have no authority here. All I ask is that you give us your fusion reactor specifications. We will manufacture ours ourselves. In fact, we insist upon it to support our own economy.” This is a terrible deal, but it may be the only decent choice they have. They need that stone, whatever it takes. It doesn’t matter that Trina wouldn’t want them to risk a war on her behalf, because she doesn’t have a say in it. She’s the one who’s lost, and this might be the only way to get her back. They’ll worry later. “Or we could just hold you all for espionage until your government gives us what we want. We know you’re valuable.”

That was the wrong thing to say. Now Mateo can’t work with them at all, and has no choice but to resort to what he and Ramses decided to call Plan Z. It’s going to be demanding of his acting chops. “Okay,” Mateo answers.

“What are you doing?” Marie doesn’t know about Plan Z.

“I’m assuming control.” Mateo directs his attention back to Vissarion. “We agree to your deal, but we have to make sure that there are actually diamonds down there.”

“We’ve not had time to take samples and conduct studies,” Vissarion tells him. “We’re operating on your government’s intel, which is presumably why you’re here in the first place?”

“My scientists have developed a means of detecting subsurface minerals from the surface,” Mateo says as he’s heading for the back of the SUV. He hopes the sciency words he’s using make sense. “Don’t ask me how it works, but they assure me it does. Tim, help me with this.”

“What are you doing?” Marie asks again after Timofey hesitates to help.

“I’m doing what must be done. Put down the gun. Trust me.”

“I did not realize this was back here,” Timofey says as they’re both struggling to carry the machine from the truck to the bottom of the pit that has just been dug.

“It’s mostly water,” Mateo reveals in a hushed voice. “Once you and the girls are in the car, drive as fast as you can back to Mongolia. Stop for nothing, you hear me?”

“I can do it, but what will make us go to the car? It will be suspicious.”

Mateo catches his breath for a second once they set the machine down. Then he speaks for all to hear. “This is going to be really loud! I suggest you get in your cars, and shut the doors!”

The men laugh, but that’s okay. Only his people need to be safe. Once he hears the SUV start up, Mateo turns to boot the machine up. The Russians are scrambling, trying to figure out what’s happening. Some run off, but Vissarion and others run down to stop Mateo from doing what he’s trying to do. They’re too late. The teleporter engages, and sends them all to Lebanon, Kansas, along with 530 meters of soil, a crapton of diamonds, and time gods willing, the timonite.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 15, 2398

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In the woods of northern Mongolia, outside a border city called Hiran, is a camping resort run by a family that has no love for Russia. They are not officially an agency safehouse, but this is the closest the team can get to Russia without being in Russia. They will cross here, and assume their new identities, which Winona’s people were able to create for them at surprising speed. The resort tried to house them for free, but Winona insisted on paying. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and in a capitalistic society, transactional relationships tend to last longer, and remain stronger, than ones without strings, and up-in-the-air exit clauses.

Alyssa is no longer nervous. She’s done well with her training, and at this point, the longer they wait, the more difficult it will be. She’s had to memorize a lot of cultural and political information to complete this mission, so she doesn’t want to forget. Mateo, Marie, and their new associate, Timofey Putin have learned their roles too. They feel like real secret spies now, working for the government, and managing assets. Leona would be better at this, but she’s a woman, and a female in a position of power doesn’t fly in this reality’s version of Russia. Marie has to pretend to be a submissive secretary, and Alyssa will literally look like a man. She’s not the President, though. She’s just a dvoryanin, which is a sort of nobleman in soviet nations. The story is that his daughter wants a new summer cottage for her and her dogs, and she wants it in a very specific place. Vissarion Chaykovsky loves his daughter, and would give her the world if he could, so he’s willing to spend whatever it takes. The best part is that the name should ring a bell in Mirny, but not be surprising enough for people to try to confirm his identity or presence.

The backup team is going to be staying right here on this side of the border, waiting to welcome them back at the end of a successful mission, or to extract them if it turns out not so successful. It’s cute that they think they could help. Mongolia is hours away by aircraft, over enemy territory. If something goes wrong, they’re pretty much on their own, which is why Ramses packed them a little present. It’s an in case of emergency kind of thing. Why did Russia have to be the largest country in the world, and why did the mine have to be so close to the center of it? That’s a problem for tomorrow. Tonight, they’ll get some sleep, and try to cross the border in the morning, hopefully without issue.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 14, 2398

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Leona stands on the edge of the field as the helicopter drops from the sky to land on the grass. Leaves, loose blade, and other debris assault her face, but she remains steadfast. Her colleagues are more easily flapped. “Aren’t you nervous?” one of them asks, trying to whisper above the noise.

“Why would I be?” Leona asks.

“It’s a United States senator, coming here to evaluate your work.”

Leona waits until Senator Honeycutt is within earshot, and the bird quiets down a little. “He’s just a man; not someone to be feared.”

Her colleague is even more scared now.

“Thank you for taking the time, Dr. Matic,” Senator Honeycutt says, ignoring her remark in the way a statesman should.

“Same to you,” Leona replies sincerely. She does recognize that he’s busy, and the tour will eat into his schedule significantly. She genuinely appreciates it. “Follow me.”

She leads him across the grounds, and into the building. This is not the underground lab where the rocketship was constructed, nor the little lab that the Honeycutts gave her and Ramses. It’s a decommissioned muscle car factory about an hour from the KC metro, which came ready with the space, ventilation, and powerload operationalization potential that they require for this venture.

Petra is in the lobby, and only didn’t greet the senator on the lawn so she could present all the team leaders in a neat, orderly row, like the children in The Sound of Music before bedtime. They seem to be standing in order of height, though that may be a coincidence. One can only hope. It’s nice that he’s here, but Leona wasn’t being facetious when she said that he was just a man. He nods appropriately as Petra lists off the team leaders’ names, and each time she does, that leader runs off in a show of work ethic that suggests they barely have enough time for even a moment such as this.

“Could I please see the staging area?” Melville asks.

Petra is perturbed. She had more grandstanding and fanfare to go through.

Leona saves it. “Of course, sir. Right this way.” He follows her onto the mezzanine that overlooks the factory floor below. They walk along it, to another section.

Most of the space has been devoted to part fabrication. The area where they will all be put together into the form of a working fusion reactor is small. Early reactors in the main sequence were gigantic because they had to be to get anywhere close to net positive output. Leona has decided to not worry about doing this. She considered starting them off slow, but she promised them a fusion-powered rocket, and she may not be around long enough to see it through if she doesn’t jump right to real progress. Hopefully the Prime Directive isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

All businesslike, with a brilliant poker face, Melville looks down at the space. He snaps a few photos, and nods. “How long does it take to build one reactor?”

“One year for the first one,” Leona replies. “With staff experience, we’ll cut that down to seven months for the next one...should you want another.”

“Oh, we’ll want more,” he says. “We’re currently scouting eighty-two more sites which...” He makes a quick calculation on his handheld, “...based on your estimates, means phase two manufacturing will take less than four years for all major U.S. cities.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 13, 2398

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Mateo, Marie, and Alyssa are sitting on one side of the table, trying not to look up at the overly bright bulb above. The others have yet to arrive. Alyssa is noticeably nervous, bouncing her knee, and cracking her knuckles. They know that she’s under a lot of stress, so they don’t want to say anything, but this isn’t the kind of behavior that she should be displaying when that door opens. “It’s okay,” he assures her.

“What?” She didn’t even notice what she was doing.

“Are you gonna be able to handle this?” Marie asks her.

“Yes, I’m fine, it’s fine. It’s just...this is the government, but kind of not?”

“That’s the best way to describe it,” Marie says. “They’re sanctioned, but...not everyone who expects to know what they’re doing actually knows what they’re doing. It’s a special kind of covert.”

“And you’re one of them, but no one can know.”

“Yes, you can’t tell anyone,” Marie confirms.

“I can do that. I can keep secrets. I basically raised Trina, and the boys, though less so. You learn how to lie when you have kids.”

Mateo places a hand on her shoulder. “She has to see what you can do, that’s the only reason you’re here. We wouldn’t involve you with this side of things if we had a choice. Sometimes I wish I didn’t know anything about these people.”

Winona comes in, followed by two men, one of which appears submissive, and maybe about as nervous as Alyssa. “Sorry we’re late.”

“It’s my fault,” the nervous one says.

“We’re fine,” Marie promises.

“Yes, it’s all right, Tate. You’re not losing my job.” She faces the members of Team Matic that are present. Mateo starts to think about this. They only ever called it that because most of the members used that name, but now they have multiple Waltons, and multiple McIvers. So it just sounds self-serving.

“Snap out of it,” Marie orders him, reaching across Alyssa’s face to literally snap her fingers in front of his.

Winona laughs. “He does do that, doesn’t he?”

“He’s waiting for the narrator to finish talking,” Marie explains cryptically.

Winona doesn’t know what that means. She was never briefed on the whole Superintendent thing. “As I was going to say, this is my assistant, Tate. He’s afraid of his own shadow, so you can speak freely around him, and he won’t tell anyone.”

Mateo leans forward. “If he really is so afraid, then don’t forget to be nice.”

“I am,” Winona says. “He’s not just loyal to me, I’m loyal to him. The way I see it, that’s what separates us from the bad guys. Speaking of which...” She turns to look at the other man. “...this is Timofey Putin.”

Mateo is surprised by this name. He tries to exchange a look with Marie, but she’s not fazed at all. He’s the only one balking at it.

“What is it?” Winona asks, concerned.

“We really can speak freely here?” he asks.

“Yes, Timofey knows. Marie okayed him a month ago, even before all of this.”

“Vladimir Putin is the name of a historical President of Russia where I come from. He’s...well, he’s a bad guy.”

“Interesting,” Winona begins. “I said, speaking of bad guys, because that’s what he used to be. He was a spy, but he’s recently defected. We believe, however, that his people do not yet know, which is why he could be a great asset to you on your mission. I mean, I don’t know why you’re on the mission, or what this has to do with everything that you are, but that’s why we’re here today, right? Anyone want tea?”

“We’re fine,” Marie says. “Please, sit.”

They sit down. Tate pours himself a glass of water, spilling it from the pitcher, from the glass, and out of his mouth, right down his shirt; all three, a turkey. Alyssa can’t help but giggle. For a moment, no one speaks.

“Does this have to do with that fancy hat you’re wearing?” Winona asks, looking at Mateo.

“You don’t know what that is?” Marie asks her.

“I believe it’s called a fumbler?”

Marie laughs. “Alyssa, are you ready to remove it from Mateo’s head, and place it upon yours?”

Alyssa first looks at Marie, then turns her head to look at Mateo, and then turns back. “Any requests?”

“Her,” Marie answers, nodding towards Winona.

“Is this going to hurt?” Winona asks.

“Not if you hold still, and give Tate a raise.”

Winona cracks a smile. “Fine. Three percent.”

Tate is more scared than anyone.

Alyssa takes a deep breath before taking the hat. She immediately transforms into a mirror image of Winona, complete with the same clothing she’s wearing right now. She adjusts her position to match too, which is a trick they didn’t know she had until yesterday.

“You can move again,” Marie says as Winona is doing everything she can to hold back a gasp.

She adjusts herself, and Alyssa continues to match in realtime, like a true mirror. It’s just something that she can feel. When she creates an illusion of someone who is still alive and kicking, she also creates some kind of connection to them. Ramses figures that she could match Winona’s movements from the other side of the planet if she wanted to. It’s not necessarily just an image. It’s...her. This is important, because they need to convince people that she’s someone else, both in how they look superficially, and how they move around. Everyone has their own gait, their own way of itching the back of their head, or pushing their glasses up the bridge of their nose. Even holding up the wrong specific fingers to gesture a quantity could give her away. She has to look and act like her target at all times, or people might get suspicious, even if they could never guess that it has something to do with a time power illusion.

“I do not understand how that works,” Winona laments. “I thought all powers had to do with time in some way.”

“Time and space,” Marie clarifies. “You’re in that space over there, so she is superimposing everything in that space over what is in her space. It’s all about the movement of light.”

“Fascinating,” Timofey finally speaks, and does it in his thick Russian accent. “I have heard the stories, but to actually see it... Is there more you could show us?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 12, 2398

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Angela is sitting in the welcome room. It has a conference table, multiple screens, a snack bar with refrigeration, couches, and comfortable chairs. This is where she’ll first meet clients. It’s a playground for them to explore what kind of software they might want to create without the limiting factors of a stuffy office. Completing this room was the final flourish. If she wanted to take a meeting today, she would be ready for them. Well, the building would be ready. Psycho-emotionally speaking, she may never be ready. She’s nervous already, and she hasn’t even opened the doors yet. Can she do this? Is she ready? Should she do it?

Kivi peeks her head into the room like a sideways prairie dog. “Hey.” She’s Angela’s researcher. Angela knows how to counsel people, and she knows how to code, which is a lot of work for one person. It will be Kivi’s responsibility to find people who might be interested in their services, but who might not be aware that it’s even a thing. Or they might not be aware that they can do it for free. This is a highly competitive field, but most companies charge for development. Angela isn’t even sure that she wants to call them clients, because once they go into business together—if it goes that far—they will be more like partners. They will work together to build something, and share in the profits, and if it fails, they will share in the loss. The point of this is to take on the financial burden, because her only partners will be people who both can’t do it on their own, and can’t afford to invest monetarily.

Angela takes a deep breath. “You found my secret hiding place.”

“You mean the biggest room on the floor besides the lobby? Yep.”

Angela nods, but doesn’t say anything.

Kivi walks over and sits down next to her. “What are you feeling?”

“Hesitation.”

“Hesitation,” Kivi questions, “or cold feet?”

She shakes her head. Does it matter? The result is the same when this whole project is cancelled. They should never have even tried, and they wasted so much time, money, and effort getting to this point. They don’t need the money. The entire pursuit is all about her, inspired by the simple fact that Leona and Ramses only needed one floor for their lab. The business doesn’t do the team any good, and it doesn’t do the world much good either. It’s selfish. She feels so selfish, spending so much time on this.

It’s like Kivi can see all this detailed angst in Angela’s eyes. “You don’t have to feel bad about doing this, just because Leona is working on fusion, and Ramses, Mateo, and Alyssa are trying to get Trina back. They want this place to succeed. We all do.”

“It’s all so stupid compared to everything else going on.”

“It’s not, and you won’t feel that way when I show you the profile for your first partner.” She casts her tablet to the big screen. A group of teenagers are laughing for the camera. “The boy in the green shirt has been walking two miles to the nearest internet cafe everyday to research ways to help his community. The area is poverty-stricken, and the school’s population is dwindling as a cult promising riches recruits kids for what he realizes is actually a militia. He has some pretty cool ideas to put a stop to it, but not the resources to follow through. Upon your go-ahead, I’m prepared to reach out.”

Angela reads about him on the screen, and thinks. “Okay. Call him.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 11, 2398

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Training. Before Ramses started to have to devote all of his time to trying to get Trina back, he was working on a way to give people their time powers back permanently. The immortality water injections worked really well for a few uses, but they wore off quickly, and it would be nice to not worry about procuring more. It was never that high on the list of priorities since teleporting is a convenient alternative to traditional means, it isn’t usually necessary. It’s mostly a luxury that most of them spent most of their lives not having anyway. Angela and Marie could do it in the afterlife simulation once she reached Plus status, but she didn’t exercise the right very often. It wasn’t because she was used to a life without it. It’s that after you die, the time it takes to accomplish something the hard way doesn’t seem as bad as it once was.

Alyssa McIver was born in a reality that didn’t allow temporal manipulation, except for certain exceptions, apparently. But they know that she has time powers, which allow her to create illusions, which she may or may not use primarily to generate disguises for people. There is a chance that she gets such powers later in her personal timeline, but they have every reason to believe that she was born with them. She should have them now, though they would have been suppressed her entire life up until this point. The team was content to keep her in the dark regarding her destiny. If they couldn’t prove it to her, there would be no point in saying anything. But things have changed. They need disguises. They need McIver hats, if that’s even possible with the state that she’s in.

“It’s not working,” Alyssa says. Her eyes are so closed, so what does she know? Anyway, she’s right, it’s not.

“Do you feel anything different?” Ramses asks, tablet in hand, ready to take notes on how the experiment is going.

“Nothing. I’m still not sure that I believe you.”

“Perhaps that is your problem,” Mateo says. “If you believe you can’t do it, then you can’t, so why not try believing that you can?”

“You can’t just decide to believe something,” she contends. “Something has to convince you, and that usually comes from the outside.”

“We showed you the McIver hat.”

“Stop calling it that.”

“That’s what it is,” Ramses reasons.

“I didn’t make no hat, and you didn’t show me using any special power. You showed Marie changing herself into famous actors, and other celebrities. I have seen no evidence that that has anything to do with me. The hat is amazing. I’m unremarkable.”

“That is certainly not the word I would use to describe you,” Mateo argues.

“We have been at this for hours,” Alyssa begins. “We’ve not made any progress. You haven’t even seen my cheek bubble as the illusion tries to form. Nothing has happened. It’s useless.”

“It’s not useless,” Ramses tries to explain. “It’s all part of the process, and it’s all leading up...to this.” With the final words, he reaches into the box, and pulls out the McIver hat that Marie got from The Dealer, handing it to Alyssa.

“What am I meant to do with this thing?” she questions.

“You don’t know where hats go?” Ramses jokes.

She chuckles voicelessly. “I thought this was for other people who want to borrow my power.”

“Generally, yes,” Ramses says, “and it can do that because there’s power in it. Yours. It doesn’t work with everyone, because not everyone has the ability to harness it. The Dealer doesn’t, but Marie does, and I’m presuming that you’re more like her.”

“Someone told me that Marie has some of that immortality water in her system. They wouldn’t tell me what kind, or why it’s lasting longer than normal. But instead of these injections, why don’t you give me some of that stuff?”

Mateo and Ramses exchange a look. Marie still has Health and Death water in her system, because they were used to perform an abortion. This is a medical condition that cannot be replicated. “She has private reasons for that. It won’t work for you,” Mateo says as vaguely as possible, hoping to not elicit any followup.

“Go on and put on the hat,” Mateo suggests. “It’s like jumpstarting a car.”

She sighs, a tiny bit frustrated, but mostly tired. “I don’t know what that means.” Oh yeah, this world hasn’t used petrol cars in a long time.

Ramses doesn’t say anything, he just nods at her encouragingly.

She sighs again, and gives it a try. Her facial expression changes just from putting it on. She still looks like herself so far, but she’s clearly feeling something, maybe a surge of energy?

“Report,” Ramses requests.

“I don’t know,” she answers. “I can’t describe it. It’s...it’s like a light? What would light feel like if it didn’t feel like heat? I dunno.” She shakes her head, trying to come up with a better way to word it.

“That’s good, that’s good.” Ramses taps some notes down. “Okay, now I want you to do it the same way we practiced, except now there’s a zero percent chance that it won’t work. Think about someone you want to look like. Visualize an image of them standing in front of you. Then turn it around, and pull it back until the image is wrapped around you, like a suit.”

Alyssa closes her eyes and tries again. They can see her struggling with it, but in a way that makes it look like it might actually be working this time. Her cheek doesn’t bubble, like she said it might. Sharp beams of light appear out of nowhere, and shoot across her face and body. She slowly disappears, and then faster and faster, until she’s been completely replaced. It’s the current President of Russia.

“Okay,” Ramses says, smiling widely. “You’ll probably always have to wear the hat, until we fix the time power suppression problem for this reality, or get you to the main sequence, but I think we have something here. It’s a great start.”

Alyssa doesn’t seem to consider it a problem. It’s a comfortable enough hat, and it disappears when she transforms into someone else anyway. She’s more concerned with the mission itself, which is perfectly understandable. It won’t be a walk in the park. A part of her always thought that none of this would work, and she wouldn’t have to participate. Now it’s all too real. Ramses calling it a start is a nice thing to hear, though.

“A start?” Mateo asks. “I would call this more than a start. She looks exactly like him! I can’t tell the difference!”

“Take a step to your left,” Ramses tells her.

They see the President step over, but not all of him moves at the same time. It looks like a bad censorship job, not quite synced up. Okay, so he’s right; it’s only a start.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 10, 2398

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Mateo knocks on the door, but can’t hear the muffled response from the other side, so he knocks again. The response is still muffled, but it sounds angrier this time, so either Alyssa wants him to just come on in, or she very much wants him to leave. He decides to open it carefully, and prepare an exit strategy. “Hey, sorry, I couldn’t hear you out there.”

She’s rushing from one side of the apartment to the other. She’s wearing a towel around her body, and one on top of her head. She’s trying to put away some dishes in the kitchenette, and haphazardly fold the clothes on the couch at the same time. “I said to come in. I can’t talk, though. I just came back to shower, because my brothers complained about the smell, but I’m going right back to the blacksite.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Look, Matty, I know you all say that Trina isn’t in there, but what if she is? What if this Erlendr asshole is just suppressing her consciousness, and she’s been trying to escape this whole time? She may be watching through his eyes, I have to control for that. When we get her back, what should I say to her, that I just stayed home, and left her there in the prison?”

“No, I suggest you tell her that you did everything you could to get her back, and sitting in that room doesn’t accomplish that,” Mateo replies. They’ve been to a number of places on Mateo’s list already, usually for other reasons, and now it’s time to start considering making a point of finishing off that list with a real world tour. He does not yet know, however, who will be accompanying him. A good start could be to ask for help for something very specific.

She unwraps the towel from her head, and furiously dries her hair as much as possible. “What else can I do? I’m not a physicist, like Ramses.”

“He’s not a physicist, he’s an engineer.”

“Whatever.”

“Speaking of Ramses, he needs something from somewhere, I need help getting it for him. Marie is considering going with, but whether she does or not, I could do with a translator.”

“You’re going back to Russia?” They learned that Alyssa’s mother’s family originates from Russia, and that her grandmother taught Alyssa the language before her death. The younger children don’t know it, and of course, wouldn’t be suitable for this mission anyway.

“Technically, I wouldn’t say that we were ever in Russia before since we never got off the boat. I’ve never been at all, even in my home reality.”

“What do you need in Russia, and how will it help Trina?” When he takes a little too long to answer, she winces. “Is it dangerous? Spit it out.”

“It’s politically very dangerous, they could brand us traitors by asking to excavate in the area, because we would have to give the Russians the mineral rights, but I don’t see that we have any choice given what else is down there.”

“What else is down there?” Alyssa questions, annoyed. “What is down where? You’re explaining this all out of order, you realize that, right?”

Mateo takes a breath. “You’re right. There’s a mine in Russia that contains a ton of diamonds, worth hundreds of billions of dollars—maybe even over a trillion—but the thing is that this mine was never discovered in the Third Rail. We know exactly where it is, and we don’t care about the diamonds. According to lore, there’s a gemstone down there that’s worth more than everything else combined.”

“Lore?” Alyssa asks skeptically.

“Marie’s friend from Australia who collected stuff like this, and things that Leona Delaney read in her book about time travel; they corroborated each other’s stories regarding the thing.”

“What is it?”

“It’s called timonite, and it’s rumored to grant the user control over all of time and space.”

“That sounds like a fantasy,” Alyssa reasons. She steps behind her bedroom door so she can finish changing. She starts to raise her voice a little to compensate, but it makes her seem irritable. “I don’t much care for fantasy. Talk to Moray about that stuff, he’ll go on, and on, and on.”

“It might not be real, but isn’t it worth the risk?”

“If it starts a war with Russia, which Russia will win because of their sudden influx in capital, then no. Trina is a child, so she doesn’t understand the politics, but if she did, I know she wouldn’t want that. She hates violence. She doesn’t even like to watch cartoon characters fighting each other, even though they’re all immortal.”

“You’re right. Again.”

“There has to be a way to dig where we need to dig without starting an international incident,” Alyssa figures. “You’re time traveling teleporters, for God’s sake; get creative.”

A lightbulb comes on over Mateo’s head. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. We need you more than ever.”

“I could interpret for you, but you’ll have to figure out who you want to talk to. It can’t lead to violence, that’s my one rule.”

“We require the most powerful person in Russia. He’s the only man who can get us what we need.”

“Well, yeah, but you’ll still be branded as a traitor.”

“Not if we have help from the U.S. government, because we don’t need to talk to the actual Russian President. We just need someone who looks like him, and we need him to talk to other Russians on our behalf.”

She stares at him. “Am I supposed to know where you’re going with this?”

Has anyone ever told you why we were immediately comfortable being around you? Didn’t it seem like we recognized your name, or something?”

“It seemed a little weird, but I had other things on my mind, and later I thought we knew too much anyway, so you either had to bring us in, or kill us.”

“It is we who knew too much,” Mateo corrects. “We already knew you. Or we knew of you. Vearden knows you personally, he met you centuries from now, or something.”

“You mean that I’m going to go with you to your alternate reality, and meet people I’ve already met before?”

“Yes.”

“Hm. What does that have to do with the Russian President?”

He smirks. “What are your thoughts on hats?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 9, 2398

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Marie badges herself in, and heads for Ramses’ area of the lab, which is farthest from the elevator. His hair is mussed up, and the table is full of chemicals, some of which may be drinkable, placing the whole operation—and his life—in danger. He doesn’t even notice her approach. “Rambo.”

He’s startled, but he doesn’t make eye contact. “What?”

“You haven’t been sleeping.”

“I can sleep when it’s over, Angela.”

“I’m Marie.”

“I’ve heard it both ways.”

“Have you made any progress?”

He laughs at the very idea. He’s run so many tests on the Insulator of Life, and the Livewire, trying to figure out how to get Trina back, or at least confirm where she is. He hasn’t worked on anything else since the incident, and he’s no closer to solving the problem. Cheyenne is going to need the Insulator back pretty soon, so either she’s going to have to come to them, or he’ll have to find another way to the answers. “Nothing. I have absolutely no idea how either one of these things works. No moving parts, no obvious unusual properties. If I didn’t know any better, I would call it magic.”

“Maybe that’s what it is,” she offers.

He scoffs.

“Why not? When I first found out that time travel was a thing, I immediately started questioning everything I thought I knew about the physical world. Ghosts, sorcerers, even God; perhaps they were real. I’ve not seen any evidence of such things so far, but maybe these two objects are evidence of something.”

He shakes his head. “It doesn’t work like that. Time travel is crazy, but it’s not magic. Magic inherently doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t have rules. If you need something done, there’s a way to do it, and any failure to accomplish it is based solely on your lack of imagination. Science has rules, whether we’re cognizant of all of them, or even any of them, or not.”

“Well, I’m not going to argue with you about it. I’m your elder, but you’re much smarter. I’m not here to convince you to stop trying, just to take a break.”

“I can’t do that. People are counting on me.”

“I’ve spoken with Bridgette and Cheyenne. They’re moving into the Lofts.”

Now he finally looks directly at her. “They are?”

“This floor is exclusive to travelers, which Cheyenne is. Angela is moving back in with Kivi, even though Kivi just moved out of Angela’s place.”

Ramses is happy for a moment before he realizes that this only solves one issue. “It doesn’t matter. The McIvers need me to find their sister. Yeah, it’s great that I can keep working with the Insulator, but I still can’t waste time sleeping. Trina needs me.”

“She needs you to be at the top of your game,” Marie corrects. “Sleepy Ramses is sloppy Ramses. Who knows, you might even come up with a new angle to tackle the problem when you let your brain rest a little.”

Ramses argues more, but Marie calls Leona to ask her to give him an order, so he reluctantly goes upstairs to sleep on it. She was right, a weird dream gives him an idea.